The cycle refers to the feeling of apathy, uselessness, lack of power and motivation, when even the smallest obstacle seems to overwhelm you. The cycle belongs to an open project entitled "Emotional self-portraits".
"Although Hueckel’s self-revision in the Resigned Self-Portraits and Calmed Self-Portraits stems from concentration on the subject’s mental condition, it emanates to the ambient space. In other words, the space where the artist’s lonely figure is located evokes her emotions. The process leading from the subject’s inside to the expression in the reality bound by the picture frame is a manifestation of the subject’s appropriation of this picture. Two paths of reflection set by the above-mentioned collections point to the possibility of involving space as a context to complement the artistic ‘I’ present in the work.”
D. Łuczak, “(Re)visions of Magdalena Hueckel”, editorial to the exhibition catalogue "Obsessive self-portraits", Piekary Gallery, Poznań 2009
"(...) Ostentatiously or provocatively, the model’s body slips out of the camera’s view and seems to shift partially off the picture. But where to? The question itself sustains the idea of Edouard Pontremoli as he writes about an irreducible spaciotemporal shift between the ‘here’ of the viewer and the ‘there’ of the photography: ‘the remoteness of a visible object – my note, E.J.] from the current field of vision is so significant that it calls up associations of absence, death, void.’"
E. Jarosz, “Magda Hueckel: Emotional self-portraits”, editorial to the exhibition catalogue "Emotional self-portraits", Wozownia Gallery, Toruń 2009
„ (...) Hueckel examines the fears and obsessive illusions hidden inside the visions of these dreams. However, she doesn’t recreate the visual form of the latter but instead tries to picture what they conceal. She reaches beneath their façade to reveal what Sigmund Freud would call our subconscious, hysterical phobias. This act of uncovering can be seen as an individual wrestling with what’s hidden in the depths of the mind and which forces its way out in uncontrolled moments.”
D. Łuczak, “Images underneath the eyelids”, editorial to the exhibition catalogue "REM Cycle", Art foto Gallery, Częstochowa 2010
TECHNICAL DATA:
Number of works: 13
Size: 40x27cm | 18x24cm | 60x90cm (only Neglected self-portraits I, II, III, IV, V)
Technique: gelatine silver prints | gelatine silver prints | pigment prints on Lambda semi mat